Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the Chamber. It is very important, in celebrating the progress made by women for women in this country, that we also acknowledge the Minister's role in that. I will comment on some of that progress shortly. Just as important, we need to reflect on the enormous challenges women in this country have been facing for a long time. Thousands of women are trapped in low-paid employment, usually part-time work. The State can help to address that. There are women who have had to cut back their hours of work or leave their jobs because the State has simply failed to ensure an adequate supply of childcare places or care for the elderly. The Minister's Department is crucial in all of that.

There are mothers and young children in rental accommodation who are living the nightmare of the country's housing shortage while others are facing shocking delays in accessing healthcare and therapies. Every week, right across this Chamber, I and other Senators deal with mothers who come to us with issues because they cannot access home care support, assistive technologies and the vital therapies they need for their children.

While the announcement today that a referendum will be held later this year is very welcome, I would like a clear date for it. The announcement comes on the back of long campaigning by the National Women's Council of Ireland and the work of my colleague, Deputy Ivana Bacik, and the Joint Committee on Gender Equality. We should not sugar-coat this referendum. The announcement was made in a week in which we were made aware that the eviction ban will be lifted over the next three months.We know that the impact of that will be devastating and people have nowhere to go. I am sure it is the same in Dublin 15 as it is in Dublin 7, 1, 3 and 9 in terms of the lack of places to rent and how housing assistance payment, HAP, is simply insufficient for people to put affordable, sustainable roofs over their head.

In the time that I have, I want to touch on the progress that has been made. It is important to acknowledge that. We now have the Gender Pay Gap Information Act, which is fantastic, and it is a credit to the Minister for bringing it through the Oireachtas. However, we have to recognise that this is the start and not the finish of the work to close the gender pay gap in this country.

While people talk about the hourly gender pay gap, at the end of the day, who ever thinks about the hourly rate of pay? Very few people do. They think about their weekly or monthly rate of pay. The gender pay gap in this country is 22.2% when comparing, on average, what men earn relative to the average of what women earn. That is extrapolated from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, administrative earnings data. That is based on both hours and the hourly rate.

There is an important point to be made when looking at the good employment figures seen over the past year. Employment has grown by almost 160,000 people and it is almost half and half between men and women but yet, 90% of the male employment growth is in full-time work, while only 60% of female employment is in full-time work. Almost 40% of that female employment is in part-time work. Some of it is voluntary but some of it is not. That is where the State has a role to play in ensuring that those who want to take up work and earn a full weeks’ wage can do so.

I acknowledge there has been great progress with regard to the national childcare scheme. However, what is the point in having a subsidy if we do not have the places? The Minister knows this. We have had news in the past week that between June last year and June this year, we will have lost 105 preschool places in Stoneybatter alone. That is preschool; it is not necessarily touching on the other issues of crèche. However, there is an enormous issue, particularly in inner city Dublin, of a lack of appropriate crèche and preschool places and the problem is getting increasingly worse. Often, it is not for want of money. Even commercial providers are telling me that it is not for want of money. It is just that they cannot find appropriate places. I looked at the likes of Hardwicke Street, where the crèche operated by the Lourdes Youth and Community Services is located. Over the door it says "Irish structural funds and Irish Government funding". There was a time when the Irish Government built crèches and childcare facilities. We need to get back into that if we are to address the childcare shortage issues.

Second, on the gender pay gap, if we are to seriously tackle that gender pay gap, we have to ensure that we have a robust and strong commitment to collective bargaining and a recognition of the right to collective bargaining in this country. There will hopefully be some progress on that this year. It is not yet clear what exactly the Government will do in that space. However, we have to be clear that there is an issue with regard to pay progression upon promotion for women in this country. There are poor outcomes when women negotiate on their own relative to when they negotiate collectively. We know that from the research. In addition, there is the issue of very high of numbers of women in part-time work relative to full-time work. That is not covered-----